Loyalty is crucial in any subscription-based business. The world of recurring billing is focused on keeping and retaining loyal customers. Subscribers who connect with your business in a meaningful way are less likely to let cards expire and subscription renewals fail. Loyalty also translates to higher customer lifetime value. But how do you build this loyalty? By following these three steps, you can help create loyal customers and increase the lifetime value of your subscription plans.
Create an Onboarding Plan to Start on the Right Foot
Onboarding is your first step to delivering the value you promised before your subscriber hit purchase. It’s your first and best tactic to drive repeat purchase—onboarding has the highest correlation to retention and it’s all about driving engagement. Say you’re a gym and you succeed when your customers see results, keeping them returning to the gym and renewing every month. Your onboarding journey may consist of a welcome email, a survey to understand their goals, and then relevant workouts sent weekly to help them reach those goals. Going a step further, and to drive potential upsells via your onboarding journey you offer weekly 1:1 coaching sessions as part of an add on or an elite plan. This part of Subscription management, creating segmented offers and upsell paths, should start from day one. Following this type of approach you’re consistently delivering value, ultimately retaining that customer for longer and potentially increasing LTV by driving add ons and upsells.
Create Memorable Moments by Celebrating Milestones
As part of your onboarding journey you can set or gather milestones—if we continue with the gym analogy maybe it’s inches or weight lost or number of sessions achieved at the gym. Using this type of “surprise and delight” tactic you’re building a connection between that subscriber and your brand, a connection that results in staying power. Another example might be a pet subscription product business. A pet food subscription service can provide a great example to see the benefits of this strategy. Asking for information on the type of dog to tailor box items, or at a minimum for the subscriber’s pet’s birthday during the onboarding experience can go a long way toward building brand loyalty. Every year send a “Happy Birthday” email with a coupon code or some free goodies in their box.
Create a Lifecycle Marketing Plan to Constantly Connect with Subscribers
Onboarding is only the first step in delivering on the value promised. Engaging your subscriber throughout their lifecycle is critical to retaining customers. This type of lifecycle marketing can reduce voluntary churn, keeping your customers from hitting the cancel button. A second type of churn, involuntary churn, a key part of your churn calculation is also critical to consider when setting your lifecycle marketing in motion. Ensuring you have things like an account updater and personalized dunning flows can mitigate involuntary churn. Dunning isn’t only when a payment fails, it can also be used to drive conversion for your free trial customers as part of a trial conversion flow. And lastly, planning out, as mentioned in the last section, moments of surprise and delight throughout your subscriber lifecycle by leveraging promotions for items your subscriber may enjoy, special discounts, and early access to features deliver repeat value that drive repeat purchase.
About Recurly
If you are ready to take the next step in evolving your subscription-based business, Recurly can help. In all kinds of markets, from pet food to software, businesses are introducing subscription-based models to build recurring revenue streams. Recurly has been a key part of the recurring payment industry for over a decade and has helped manage over 40 million subscriptions. Their expertise features a range of smart tools to help your company adapt quickly, scale globally, and increase customer lifetime value. They understand the difficulties you face and remain a partner throughout your subscription journey. Whether you are iterating new pricing models or want to optimize your churn rate formula, make Recurly your top choice to help your business thrive in the modern business landscape.
Discover how Recurly can help you make a personal connection with customers at https://recurly.com/
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